Success is what the American Dream is all about. Many
people are motivated by the promise of a better life, hence
they chase dollar bills all their lives in the hopes of
living out the American Dream - a fantasy which only money
can buy. The American economic system is designed to meet the
needs of the upper class, as it ignores problems of ethnic
minorities.

The American Dream is a fantasy that has not come true for
the millions that are toiling in the system hoping to get a
piece of the wealth which America so liberally shares with
its rich upper class. Mansions, expensive cars, a happy
family and of course lots of money. These images adorn the
minds of the less privileged of this nation.

For many this dream soon becomes a nightmare. With the
cost of living becoming so high and lack of medical care or
job security, minimal pay and an expensive education system
are just some the hurdles that people have to jump over to
reach the American Dream. Therefore it is fair to say that it
is almost impossible for numerous people to make a decent
living. Many people in America are earning minimum wage which
is $5.65 a hour, and contrary to popular belief, they are not
middle-class teenagers working for gas money. Most minimum
wage earners in the United States are adults, more than half
are female, and about half work full time. (Epinet)

America's economic system is flawed as there is unequal
distribution of its wealth. When we examine where America's
wealth lies we see that it certainly not in filling the
bellies of countless hungry babies in this country. The
wealth is filling the pockets of the rich:

Wealth inequality has grown in the 1990s. As of 1997 (the
latest year for which data is available), the top 1% of
U.S. households controlled 39.1% of all wealth. When
comparing the changes in wealth distribution over the
1983-97 period, the large shift in wealth primarily
benefited the top 1% (rising from 33.8% to 39.1% of all
wealth). In comparison, the bottom 95% of the wealth
distribution experienced flat or falling growth in wealth
over the same period. The explosive growth of the stock
market further concentrated wealth at the top of the income
scale between 1995 and 1997. Projections suggest that the
share of wealth controlled by the top 1% increased by 1.5
percentage points (from 37.6% to 39.1%) in just the past
couple of years.(Epinet)

Behind the people who are making all the money, there is a
task force of thousands of overworked and underpaid
individuals. It seems that the people who don't count in this
country such as the racial minorities are left to do this
country's dirty work. In the following excerpt we can get a
glimpse of who really does the work in America.

The population of this country is 337 million, 154 million
are retired. That leaves 183 million to do the work. There
are 85 million in school, which leaves 98 million to do the
work.. Of this total, there are 29 million employed by the
federal government. That leaves 69 million to do the work.
Four million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves 64
million to do the work. Take from that total the 24,800,000
people who work for state and city Governments and that
leaves 39,200,000 of us to do the work. At any given time
there are 24,000,000 in hospitals, so that leaves
15,200,000 to do the work. Now, there are 15,199,998 people
in federal and State prisons. That leaves just two people
to do the work, you and me.(LinkAmerica)

Approximately thirty-two years ago, Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. launched the "Poor People's Campaign". This was a
far-reaching plan to lift the economic conditions of
underprivileged Americans of all classes and races. The heart
and soul of the campaign was the progressive demand for full
employment -- that the opportunity to secure jobs be extended
to all in order to lift people above, as King termed, "the
curse of poverty." (Epinet)

Presently, African Americans are not much better off than
they were in King's time. In 1968, the income of a typical
black family was 60 percent of whites. Median Income grew
slowly throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and much more
gradually for blacks than for whites. As of 1997, the ratio
stood at 61 percent. For all the progress of the past few
years, the income gap has closed by all of one percent - from
60 to 61 percent - since 1968. (Epinet)

Other racial discrimination can be seen through a study
done by The Association of Community Organizations for Reform
Now (ACORN), which demonstrates increasing racial disparities
in the home purchase mortgage market.

In a study covering all lenders in thirty-five cities over
three years, ACORN found that African Americans and Latinos
are rejected more frequently than white applicants for both
conventional and government-backed mortgages and that this
disparity is rising. The growth in conventional mortgages
for African Americans between 1995 and 1997 was modest,
under 5%, but the increase in lending to white borrowers
was nearly five times as large. Over the same period,
conventional home purchase lending to Latinos declined by
more than 1%. (ACORN)

Over a hundred years ago Asians were told that the streets
were paved in gold in America. They were promised some of
this gold, but in reality companies just wanted cheap labor.
(Chang 366) Nowadays the media portrays the Asians as having
found that gold. (Chang 366) According to a U.S Censor Survey
Asians average income was $22,713 whereas the whites were
$20,800 (Chang 367). The media took this statistic and
announced to America that Asians were achieving the American
Dream.(Chang 367)

Such statements bring to light aphorisms such as
"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is
suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." (Chang 367)
Unfortunately the media failed to examine these statistics
closely. A close examination of these will reveal that Asians
usually have more children or live-in relatives therefore
more mouths to feed, they also have more than one income
earner in the family to make ends meet and many live in areas
where the cost of living is very high. (Chang 367) According
to Dr. Robert S. Mariano, professor of economics at the
University of Pennsylvania, who has calculated that

When such appropriate adjustments and comparisons are made,
a different and rather disturbing picture emerges, showing
indeed a clearly disadvantaged group ... Filipino and
Chinese are no better off than black men a with regard to
median incomes.(Chang 367)

Along with other minorities Asians are only getting the
crumbs of the economic pie. The City University of New York
constructed fake resumes for Asians and for whites. Both
resumes had similar education and work experience except that
some had an Asian name and others had a white name.(369) They
concluded that the resumes meant for whites got 5 times the
interviews than the Asians. Another U.S Census showed that
Chinese and Filipino males only earned 75% and 52%
respectively as much as their equally educated white males.
(Change 369) It is obvious that economic discrimination is
coupled with racial discrimination making it very difficult
for racial minorities to climb up the financial ladder.

In order for change to take place, people need to get
together to make changes in our economic system. One such
group is ACORN, who has started the living wage campaign.

In short, living wage campaigns seeks to pass local
ordinances requiring private businesses that benefit from
public money to pay their workers a living wage. Commonly,
the ordinances cover employers who hold large city or
county service contracts or receive substantial financial
assistance from the city in the form of grants, loans, bond
financing, tax abatements, or other economic development
subsidies. The concept behind any living wage campaign is
simple: Our limited public dollars should not be
subsidizing poverty-wage work. When subsidized employers
are allowed to pay their workers less than a living wage,
tax payers end up footing a double bill: the initial
subsidy and then the food stamps, emergency medical,
housing and other social services low wage workers may
require to support themselves and their families even
minimally. Public dollars should be leveraged for the
public good -- reserved for those private sector employers
who demonstrate a commitment to providing decent,
family-supporting jobs in our local communities.(LivingWages)

There needs to be a larger public outcry against this
"institution of wealth". As more and more people demand
changes to occur, we will still be living under the golden
rule: "The one's who have the gold, make the rules." (Howard
Lyman speech). The curse of poverty is far from lifted as
there is much work to be done to bring about economic
equality for racial minorities. We, as a nation, have far to
go before we arrive at King's vision of economic justice.